Meetings

The next General Meeting of the Boston Amateur Radio Club will be held on Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. at Brookline Police Headquarters in Brookline. There will be a brief business meeting followed by Bruce Blain, K1BG, speaking on “The History of Entry Level Licensing.”

For those who wish to help, we will stuff membership renewal envelopes before the meeting, starting at about 6:45 p.m.

The next General Meeting of the Boston Amateur Radio Club will be held on Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. at Brookline Police Headquarters in Brookline. This will be a social meeting as no speaker is scheduled.

The March 2018 meeting of the Boston Amateur Radio Club will be held at MassPort Fire Rescue Headquarters, 261 Harborside Drive, East Boston, Massachusetts on Thursday March 15, 2018. There is a slight change in the meeting time. A tour of MassPort Fire Department apparatus will commence at 6:45 p.m. followed by Santarpio’s pizza at 7:15 p.m. followed by the General Meeting at 8:00 p.m. Attendance for this event is limited to 25 BARC members.

We will have two speakers at this meeting. They are: Steve Staffier, K1SMS, Communications and Interoperability Manager for Massport and MassPort Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Robert Barnes. Steve will talk about Communications Interoperability and Deputy Barnes has an interesting presentation about MassPort Fire Rescue that he will give.

There is parking available at MassPort Fire Headquarters, 261 Harborside Drive, East Boston, Massachusetts. The Fire Department is located past the Hyatt Hotel. Please park in the marked spaces.

Since we’re literally in the neighborhood, we will have Santarpio’s Pizza for dinner. A suggested donation of $7.50 per person is requested.

There is a space limitation at the facility. We will only be able to accommodate 25 members. If you’re interested in attending this meeting, you will have to send an email to k1bth@arrl.net no later than March 7, 2018 indicating your interest in attending. Management reserves the right to cancel the evening if not enough people sign up by the 7th.

This month’s general meeting will feature Gary Schwartz N1ZCE giving a talk about radio programming. Join us in the Community Room at Brookline Police HQ, 350 Washington St Brookline, on Thursday November 16 at 7:30pm.

The featured speaker at out October General Meeting will be Rob Macedo, KD1CY. Rob is the Eastern Massachusetts ARES Assistant Section Emergency Coordinator as well as the MEMA/FEMA Region 1/NWS Taunton SKYWARN Liaison. Rob will give an updated overview on SKYWARN and ARES in Eastern Massachusetts. As the Director of Operations for the VoIP Hurricane Net, he will speak on the recent hurricane net operations over the past 6 weeks including the recent Amateur Radio Operators deployment to Puerto Rico for relief efforts on the island.

At Field Day this summer, it was discovered that the club’s triband beam antenna was not performing as desired. Specifically, a high SWR was noticed on the 15m and 10m phone bands. On Saturday October 21, the club will have an antenna work party at the home of Mark KB1EKN, near the 220 bus out of Quincy Center Station. We will erect the beam on a mast, and sweep it with an antenna analyzer. If anything appears to be a problem, we will re-tune the antenna as needed. While we have the crew together, we will also take the time to test and inventory the club’s coax. If there are enough people on site, we will break up into teams to work on both tasks in parallel. Sign up for the work party here​. The club will pick up lunch for volunteers. Contact Mark KB1EKN with additional questions.